I agree consumer film is being phased out and going Third-World. But I don't see a compelling reason for the medical industry to switch. As I said, it's a niche market -- a drop in the bucket. But if you read that Foma's biggest income-maker is x-ray, what earthly reason would theyl have to halt production of a profitable product? And medical offices thrive on technology, with an investment in digital also being a "drop in the bucket," so the workflow-cost-quality tradeoffs must favor film.
Because doctor's offices are slowly switching to digital x-ray technology, the demand will slowly drop.
Manufacturing plants are not like, say, an auto repair business. With an auto repair business, when business picks up, you hire more mechanics, build some more bays. When business drops off, you let go some mechanics, idle some workstops. With me so far?
With a factory, the manufacturing line has an absolute cost. That's the cost that is expended every single day the line is open, and it doesn't vary much. The lights must be on, the heat must function, employees must be at their stations, and so on. Whether you produce 10 boxes of film a day or 10,000, the cost remains very nearly the same.
The expense of the raw materials consumed to make the film is not the biggest part of the expense of making film, you see. In fact, it is a minor impact. So if you make less film, then yes, you use fewer chemicals. But you still pay your workforce, the factory is still running and consuming money, but the costs now have to be spread across fewer product items. The cost to produce the goods goes up exponentially.
Just playing with numbers for purposes of illustration, but say a roll of film costs $1.00 to make in quantities of 100,000. If a factory 'idled down' to say 10,000 rolls of film a day, the cost per roll would be more like $10.00 per roll. Drop further down to 1,000 rolls a day, and the film now costs $100 per roll to make.
At some point, a critical line is passed. The factory become unprofitable and it must be shut down.
This happens when there is STILL SOME DEMAND for the product. But the product can no longer be made profitably in that factory, and now there can't be new factories built (perhaps smaller or more efficient, as would be done in many other industries).
So supply ends significantly before demand does. That puts the lie to
"As long as there is demand, there will be supply." That's just an old wive's tale, a sop to people who are emotionally tied to their film use. People confidently say it to each other, but not one of them can prove it - and I can prove it is absolutely not true.
There are other considerations, of course. As factories close down, other factories get a temporary blip up as they absorb the output, but again, retail film sales have fallen off a cliff, and this drives everything else as well.
Industry analysts have said that retail film sales worldwide have dropped 30% per year for the past two years now, and that trend is accellerating. How many years can film have left?
Best Regards,
Bill Mattocks
